As a part of its acclaimed series on celebrating school leadership in 2024-25, a three-days conference was organised by the National Centre for School Leadership and National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration in Delhi and was attended by 57 school heads from across different states and Union Territories of India from 8-10th January at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

From West Bengal, Dr Ivy Sarkar, the headmistress of Srirampur Girls’ High School, said, “The NCSL conference provided a valuable platform for states to share their experiences in the educational sector, deliberate their best practices, learn from each other and evolve a collective vision for transforming India’s educational landscape.

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Dr Ivy Sarkar said, as an headmistress from West Bengal, I have tried to project West Bengal’s flagship educational initiatives, the best practices of our school focusing on community-school partnership for transformation of schools. We are committed to provide quality education to all our students regardless of their socio economic backgrounds. Our initiatives have shown promising results and we are happy to share our experiences with other states. I am thankful to our state government, education department and school managing committee for providing me with all the support and cooperation all the time. My presentation also focused on the school’s initiatives in promoting holistic education, throwing light on the development of students’ emotional, social and cognitive skills. We have already implemented the holistic progress report cards in our school.”

Sonali Mullick, the SMC member of Serampore Girls’ High School, said, “We are very proud of the school’s participation at this prestigious national conference and we applaud our HM’s tireless efforts to provide the best to our students and her participation has brought laurels to our institution and reinforced our commitment to excellence in education.”

Dr Charu Smita Malik, assistant professor, NCSL, during her inaugural speech at the national conference remarked that there were a total of 350 entries from school heads from different parts of the country and they had shortlisted a total of 57 case studies and video documentaries depicting exemplary leadership practices by adopting a rigorous and systematic process of selection.

Dr Sarkar said, “The conference has helped disseminate effective teaching methods, curriculum designs, innovative approaches and institutional strategies. It has provided a platform to stay abreast with the latest developments in education. I have already decided to implement the concept of ATE (any time education) in my school. We have recently inaugurated a common room for our Class XI-XII students to spend time during their off periods. The classroom will have XI-XII tutorial videos from Bangla Shiksha classroom (an initiative of the education department), which will be retained in downloaded video forms so that the students can access them any time and make best and effective use of their free periods. This will help us leverage the resources and capacities to improve educational outcomes.”